Chapter 16: Corabelle

I didn’t start to breathe again until my car pulled up to the apartment complex. There had been too many signs today. I always felt my life was like an intricate story, crafted so carefully that every moment had symbolism and every action carried the weight of a great and important truth. Today was foreshadowing. Disaster ahead. A tragic ending.

I already had that. What more could happen?

I unlocked my door, the blackness of the familiar room a comfort. Maybe I just needed a bath, a dark room, warm water, to float in silence until the world dissolved into nothingness.

I felt my way across the tiny living room, leaving my backpack on the sofa and discarding clothes along the way. The tiles bit into my knees as I knelt in front of the bathtub, reaching blindly for the knobs.

A car drove by outside and the muted headlights penetrated the block of bottled glass in the wall of the shower. The water spilled over my hands, cold and shocking. I pushed my hair back, a tangled mass after the crazy run.

When the temperature turned warm, I flipped the drain stopper and waited for the tub to fill. The fiberglass felt good against my throbbing temple. Austin would write me, ask me what happened. I didn’t know what I’d tell him. He probably thought I was some sort of anti-drug nut, a weed prude. He had no idea. No one had any idea.

I stood up and stepped into the water. My hair grew heavy as it soaked and I slid beneath the surface, getting good and drenched.

Not true. One person knew. Katie, a friend back home who gave me my first joint in high school. I was strung out about my SAT score. I’d gotten to be a National Merit Scholar based on my PSAT, but my regular score hadn’t come back as high. Early in my senior year, I had one chance to retake it, do better, and the long nights were killing me.

Gavin hadn’t cared about his score as long as he could get in. He knew he’d have to work through school, but I hoped to get scholarships and focus on studying.

Katie and I had been prepping together, both going for as close to a perfect score as we could get. With my emphasis on literature, though, my math wasn’t topping out.

I’d never done any sort of drug. My parents were straitlaced. Most of my friends were all serious students, not the sort to party on weekends with anything more than beer, if that. Gavin didn’t do it, although he knew guys who did. Our drug of choice had been sex.

But a couple weeks before the retake, Katie had shown me her stash, spreading the little papers to roll and the baggie of weed out on her kitchen table. She got it from her brother, she said, who got it from someone at college.

“I think you’re just too uptight about your score,” she said. “Take a practice set lit up and see if you do any better.” She handed me the fat roll and a lighter.

“I don’t smoke cigarettes,” I told her. “I’ll have a coughing fit.”

“It’s different. Smoother. Try it.”

I looked at my last practice score. I wasn’t getting any better. I just couldn’t answer things fast enough. I felt the weight of the clock, the pressure to get every question right.

I stared at the joint. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Here, I’ll start it.” She lit the end of the roll at the twist and it blazed with light for a moment, then the burnt end went black. She sucked in, held it, then blew out a long clean line of smoke that dissipated elegantly into nothingness.

The smell hit, the sickly sweet smoke. She passed the joint to me. “Just take a couple puffs, then stop until you see what it does.”

“Do I breathe it in?”

She laughed. “Of course.”

Katie made it seem easy. I tentatively put it to my lips.

“Just suck it in,” she said.

I inhaled, and immediately felt the urge to cough, but it wasn’t too bad, and I could suppress it.

“You’re doing all right,” she said. She took the joint from me and puffed. “Don’t forget to exhale!”

I let it go and the smoke went everywhere in an ugly cloud. Katie laughed. “You’ll get it.” She passed it back. “One more and then we’ll wait. It takes a few minutes. You may not feel much the first time.”

I briefly flashed to middle school and the anti-drug lectures. No one had paid the least bit of attention then. I hadn’t been around drugs, ever. Katie acted like it was no big deal.

“How you doing?” she asked.

My mouth tasted strange. I had a sense of being a little hot and my heart might have been beating faster, but then, I was nervous. “Nothing,” I said.

“One more.” She passed it over again.

I took another puff and gave it back. “I’m going to do one more timed section and call it a day,” I said.

She examined the joint. “I have no idea if this is any good or not. Nothing to compare it to.”

I shrugged. Figures it wouldn’t do anything to me. I probably did something wrong.

But somewhere about question six, I felt a lightness come over me. My stomach turned, just a tiny tweak, and I felt buoyant, chilled out, like everything was good.

I glanced up at Katie. She’d kicked her feet up on the table. I wondered if her parents knew about her habit. She was doing it right here in the kitchen. Either they approved or they weren’t coming back anytime soon.

I moved through the questions. The extra work was paying off. I could almost predict the answers they would use for options and easily eliminated the wrong ones. I forgot about the clock entirely, feeling a rhythm with the equations, not completely caring if I got them right or not, moving from one to the next with ease. I ticked off the last one and noticed I still had time left. Crazy.